Wednesday, December 05, 2018

Halleluka

You won't care if you aren't an NBA fan, except maybe if you are from Dallas. He is probably the second-most famous Slovenian, and may even pass Melania, though I admit it's going to be hard to pass any First Lady on such a thing.

Song parodies are the easiest type of humor, as Wymans can attest. We can create these all day. Yet there are gradations, and some are much better than others. The first verse of this is top-notch. The second verse is only okay.

I was very big on Doncic in the draft, and he is even better than expected. He is just awesome. 19 years old. I wish he were a Celtic. For those interested in the pure athleticism angle, teams were worried about that. When one reads about "quickness" or "twitchiness" in basketball, people don't mean it to be a code word for "black," but it just is. I will be talking about that in an upcoming post, but for now it is enough to know that his athleticism is a bit odd. All NBA players are in the 99th percentile for athleticism, but when there are only 450 jobs in the world at that level, small differences matter. He is a phenomenal athlete, but what sets him apart in the NBA is not the quickness as much as a devastating deceleration (see also, James Harden), then re-acceleration. He can lull people on a fully physical level, even when they know he has "deceptive speed." Athletes rely on the muscle memory of playing against a hundred other opponents - they can't think fast enough to adjust to him. Their reflexes tell them to play him at a certain speed, they scramble to adjust when he has suddenly stopped, and then he blows by them, still looking just a little slower than the person who is off-balance behind him. He also has a Larry Bird/Magic Johnson ability to see how his pass at a strange angle to a teammate opens up a lane for a subsequent pass that others couldn't see. As with Bird and Magic, teammates adjust to this long before opponents do, as they see it every day. They learn that an unexpected pass is probably meaningful, and their muscle-memory adjusts and they find ridiculous passes on top of the last one. It take a while, but it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. You play what should be exceptional defense against the Mavs, and suddenly someone has an easy shot that no one foresaw.

Isaac K Lee is a surprisingly good singer for a guy who is really only a podcast producer, BTW. He said he learned to sing in church. Didn't say which one.